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This year marks that sixth year of Prof. Gao’s teaching at NTNU. From May 15th to June 15th, a series of Gao Xingjian Art Festival takes place in forms of special exhibition, sharing meetings and forum for creativity to celebrate our friendship with Nobel laureate Prof. Gao. The Musical of Soul Mountain and Mountains and Seas”-A Chinese Rock Musical will be on stage again. In return to this, Prof. Gao present a piece of Ink wash painting “The Thinker” to NTNU. President Chang receives that paining and the work will be placed at the new Art Museum of the Masters opened this May so that the spirit of creativity of Prof. Gao will be kept at NTNU.

 

Gao Xingjian (born January 4, 1940) is a Chinese émigré novelist, playwright, and critic who in 2000 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature “for an oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity.” He is also a noted translator, screenwriter, stage director, and a celebrated painter.

To invite Prof. Gao to teach at NTNU, President Chang flew to Paris in 2011 and met Prof. Gao in person to ask him to be the Chair Professor at NTNU. In 2012, when Prof. Gao came to NTNU, he turned his novel “Mountains and Seas” about Ancient Myths into a musical. When the musical debut at the National Theatre 4 years ago, Gao praised it as “an epoch-making work in the history of Chinese literature”.

On the press conference held in May 18th, President Chang welcomed Prof. Gao’s visit along with many other professors and administrators. Students from the Graduate Institutes of Perfuming Arts performed partly of “Soul Mountain” and “Mountains and Seas”

When addressing, Gao said that although he has lived in Paris for a long time, Taiwan is a special place to him. He came to Taiwan 30 years ago as a curator at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and became friends with many people in theatre and literature. He has visited Taipei for the past six years and often mentioned that “Taiwan is my hometown”. Almost all of his Chinese works are launched in Taiwan. He also emphasized that he feels connected to NTNU. When he first came to Taiwan, he stayed at the guest housing of NTNU. He praised that NTNU is a comprehensive university in all aspects. The graduate of Perfuming Arts has reached a world class level.